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 Additional notes:
This is not a modern print. This lithograph is more than 160 years old. The image is crisp and the lines are sharp. 
 Extra Information:
The mansion is located on the Chastenay common Arcy-sur-Cure in the Yonne, 20 km northwest of Avallon. It was built from the fifteenth century on the foundations of a previous building dating from the eleventh and this specificity to be built vertically to a network of underground caves, yet close two roads once very borrowed: Via Agrippa Ocean connecting in the ancient Lyon and Brittany St. Jacques way from Germany. Decorated with a turret and a tower, the facade of the mansion is Renaissance and access to the house is via a door whose porch is richly carved. The left wing is later, built in the eighteenth and remodeled a century later by a student of Viollet-le-Duc. A small pavilion completed the set in 1875. Carved symbols suggest that the remains to the imposing appearance housed in medieval alchemical research. Later, a local legend claim that the mansion was haunted... Bought in 1966 when he was almost ruined, the mansion was the subject of a rigorous restoration campaign after its classification as historical monuments in 1971. The original facades and roofs have been preserved.
Artist Biography:
Victor Petit is a French architectural draftsman, lithographer and writer born in 1817 in Troyes (Aube) and died in 1871 in Aix-les-Bains . He is the son of Michel Victor Petit, who became a drawing teacher at the college of Sens, and Marie-Rose Baltet. His younger brother, Stanislas, devoted himself to industrial and geometric design. He was a pupil of Jean-Siméon Fort, painter of battles from whom he borrowed a taste for detail and great perspectives. He would also have been a disciple of Lemercier, the famous inventor of chromolithography. From 1838, he collaborated with the Annuaire de l'Yonne, in particular through his "Picturesque Guide to the Yonne Department" which would be published in the form of itineraries for more than twenty years (1842-1864). Victor Petit contributed regularly from 1838 to 1844 to the review Les arts du Moyen Age directed by Alexandre du Sommerard , founder of the Cluny museum. He gives several plates in the atlas of the great work published under the same title. His work is much appreciated: "The Committee (of Arts and Monuments) gives the greatest praise to these drawings executed in a new way, specific to Mr. Victor Petit, and which allows him to accentuate, like an architect, the most meticulous details, the shapes of the bases and the capitals. The effect and the beauty of the design, far from being lost in this geometric exactitude, are on the contrary raised with more intensity. The committee highly appreciates this method which reconciles the requirements of archeology and the whims of the picturesque”. The article is by Didron, secretary of the Committee, who will become his friend. His father contributed to Baron Taylor 's Voyages Pittoresques, notably to the volumes of Auvergne (1829-33), then of Languedoc (1833-34-35-37), even as the lithographic genre began to become commonplace. He himself then worked as a draftsman or lithographer in Picardy (1835-40-45), Brittany (1845-46), Dauphiné (started in 1843, published in 1854), and Champagne (started around 1841, published in 1857). He also participated, as a lithographer, in Adolphe Michel's Old Auvergne , as well as in the Vendée Monumentale and Maine and Anjouof Baron de Wismes. He also dated archaeologist Arcisse de Caumont. Like many "bohemian" artists of his time, Victor Petit traveled a lot. He twice accompanied Du Sommerard to Italy (1840 and 1842). He returned there in 1854 with Didron the Elder. In the meantime, he published a long series of Swiss and Savoyard Chalets (at least 80 color plates for Avanzo and Gambart), views of England, Germany, etc. The subtitle of his New Architecture (1856) states: Collection of modern constructions executed in France, England, Germany, Italy, drawn from nature. As his friend Challe told us in 1856, “Each year Mr. Petit leaves Paris in the summer, and begins his artistic wanderings; he has already traveled a large part of Europe, pencil in hand, always observing and drawing; his cartoons contain an incredible quantity of views of all kinds, no one better than he knew and drew all the monuments of Europe. Among historical monuments, Victor Petit particularly likes castles. He began with that of Fleurigny, near Sens, from 1838, then he illustrated the work of Chaillou des Barres on Ancy-le-Franc, Saint-Fargeau, Chastellux and Tanlay (1845, 12 plates). He drew an album of 9 boards on the castle of Hautefort (Dordogne) in 1849 (but published ten years later), and wrote the instructions for that of Pinon (Aisne), belonging to Ernest Dubois de Courval. But its interest becomes clearer with Architecture Pittoresque, or Monuments of the 15th and 16th centuries, collection of 100 + 1 plates published by Boivin (sd, 1854) (the frontispiece is entitled Châteaux de France from the 15th and 16th  centuries), and especially his castles of the Loire Valley from the 15th and 16th and 17th  centuries, drawn from nature and lithographed by VP (Paris, Boivin, 1864; lithogr. Godard or Becquet brothers). 2 large folio volumes of 50 plates each. The two volumes roughly follow the course of the river, the separation taking place in Indre-et-Loire. These are most often architect's views (elevations of facades), of scrupulous precision. On the occasion of the Archaeological Congress of France held in Saumur (1862), he became a historian and gave a remarkable lecture on "the architecture of castles in Touraine and Anjou in the 15th and 16th centuries". Victor Petit is also known for his views of the Pyrenees. From the end of the 1840s, leaving Switzerland, he traveled to spas, either for his own health or to accompany wealthy sponsors. It publishes collections dedicated to each water town "and its surroundings" (mainly Luchon, but also Bagnères de Bigorre, Cauterets, Saint-Sauveur, Barèges, les Eaux bonnes, les Eaux Chauds, or Pau), with variable composition, suitable for all budgets. The total represents more than 120 boards, of a rather uneven quality. His masterpiece is a large panorama of the Pyrenees range taken from the Place de Pau, "of such accuracy that the smallest chalet is indicated there". The collections are published by Bassy in Pau, by Dulon in Bagnères-de-Bigorre, in Paris by the Thierry brothers, and finally by Monrocq (after 1860). Its precursors or competitors are the remarkable Melling, Cervini, Jacottet, Gorse, Cicéri, Édouard Paris, or Alexandre de Bar (also published by Monrocq). Some show the same meticulousness, like Gorse, who however masters architecture less well; and above all Cicéri, whose science of contrasts gives his waterfalls and rocks an almost photographic impression. Victor Petit strives to equal him, and sometimes succeeds but never surpasses him. His meeting around 1853 with the Monrocq brothers, specialists in color maps and plans, seems to mark a decisive turning point in his career, which will turn towards architecture. This company was founded in 1848 by Jean-Noël Monrocq (1819-1913), who was, if not the inventor of lithography on zinc, at least the first to use it in 1865, then Lucien Monrocq succeeded him. It was located at 3 rue Suger, not far from the Hôtel de Cluny. Victor Petit, without abandoning the historical monuments, produced about 600 plates there in 9 collections, exclusively devoted to contemporary architecture. He is also described as an architect in the death certificate of his father, in 1865 in Sens, but his diploma has not been found. Fromdecember 1853 appears the first delivery of "Habitations champêtres", at the office of the newspaper L'École de dessinand Monrocq frères: "This work will consist of 100 boards and will be finished next March" (1855? in fact , it continues until September); the plates appeared in black in the "Album" attached to the newspaper, then in a colored collection. It is then "New Architecture" (1856, 50 plates of modern constructions executed in France and neighboring countries), "Small models of architecture" (1857, 50 plates), followed by "Small drawings" (new collection of 100 plates, 1867,Country houses around Paris" (1858, 50 plates, facades and plans), "Parks and gardens around Paris" (1861, 50 plates), "Small picturesque constructions" (1867, 50 plates, simple drawings on zinc , except factories and park ornaments), "Cosmopolitan habitations, Collection of houses… from all countries" (1868, 50 plates, published on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1867 ), followed in 1869 by a "New collection of houses…” ( 40 plates, still at Monrocq) ., some views, especially the first ones, are nicely colored thanks to the Monrocq process, and very decorative. These architectural models, for didactic purposes, are supplemented by genuine drawing manuals: Cours de paysage (1853, 24 pl); L'École de Dessin (published in a newspaper, in which Petit would have participated); The Parisian Schoolboy, or the ABC of drawing  ; 52 collections, classified into 9 categories (linear drawing, figure, landscape...), were on sale in 1867; Victor Petit would be the author of twelve of them. To this must be added Small Linear Drawing Exercises (40 plates, sometimes attributed to his brother Stanislas), Communal Constructions (30 plates), and Monumental Architecture(dimensional drawings of historic churches in large format, 5 plates) Around 1858, Victor Petit left the Pyrenees for Provence, with a more temperate climate for his health. At the time, the Côte d'Azur was only frequented in winter. The artist is interested in the antiquities of Fréjus (Sketches of the Roman monuments of Fréjus , first published in the Monumental Bulletin of 1864, which was completed in 1867 with Fréjus, Forum Julii, Descriptive note..., 142 pages, illustrated of  (in reality 82) He is also the author of a guide to the city of Arles, which has remained in manuscript. He fixed his residence in Cannes in 1864, protected by the Duke and Duchess of Vallombrosa , who granted him the usufruct of a small house at the foot of their enormous "Château des Tours". But he arrived too late to publish a truly artistic collection, Benoist's monumental work "Nice et Savoie" which had just been published. In addition to the traditional Album de Cannes, Vues en couleurs d'après les aquarelles de VP, his concern for tourism is manifested in the project of a large map of the city (which will not see the light of day), and in a guide, Walks of foreigners in the city and its surroundings(nd, around 1865, followed by a list of hotels, boarding houses and villas), constantly revised and increased; but despite his efforts, he could never compete with the English guides. He entered the office of the new "Society of Natural and Historical Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Cannes and the Arr. of Grasse", founded in 1868. He is still the author of three panoramas taken from the sea, Nice and Villefranche; these long leaflets, executed with a drawing pen, are far from having the artistic qualities of his panoramas of the Pyrenees; but the colors of the Monrocq brothers manage to give them a certain charm. Victor Petit had kept his father's house in Sens. He is the author of numerous notices and guides for travelers in the Yonne. He also publishes archaeological maps mainly focused on the Gallo-Roman remains of the department (1851). Finally, he has the project of bringing together his notes and drawings (more than 2000) in a large work, no longer organized in itineraries but dealing with the heritage of all the communes, like the monumental statistics of Calvados to which he had once collaborated. In 1870, he began to publish the first volume of his Description des Villes et Campagnes de l'Yonne relating to the arrondissement of Avallon, but the four other districts planned (1-Auxerre, 3-Joigny, 4-Sens, 5-Tonnerre) will never appear. He died in fact at the age of fifty-four, probably of consumption, in Aix-les-Bains where he had gone for treatment. He was a member of the Council of the French Archaeological Society for the Conservation of Monuments, a member of the Institut des provinces (founded by Arcisse de Caumont ), and of several local associations. These are the Archaeological Society of Sens, from its foundation in 1845, the Society of Sciences of Yonne (end of 1858), the Society of Sciences and Letters... of Cannes also since its foundation (1868). Victor Petit's finest works are as rare as they are sought-after, notably his Chalets , his Habitations champêtres and his lithographs of the chateaux of the Loire . His publisher credits him with 2,000 lithographs and more than 10,000 drawings. Those concerning the Yonne, long kept by the publisher Gallot were sold at auction in the 1920s. Those he kept in his house in Cannes, bequeathed to the local Society  and sold by her to the city in 1878, now seem lost. The city of Sens has dedicated a small street to him on the island of Yonne.

 

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